ITV turn down chance to buy Scottish / Grampian

For those of you thinking that ITV is planning on taking over the world (well, the UK) region by region, Media Guardian reports today that they've turned down the chance to purchase outright Scottish TV and Grampian TV.

ITV currently have a 17% share in SMG - and they believe they won't do any better out of the company by purchasing the broadcasting part of SMG outright.

The proposition arouse after SMG rejected Lord Alli's bid for Virgin Radio - with Lord Alli in turn hoping to join forces with ITV to buy SMG outright and then split the company into two.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/radio/story/0,12636,1424963,00.html

Really. I suspect they'll try again when the price tag is around £50 million lower..

Okay, now this is what confuses me. I thought Scottish and Grampian were a PART of ITV (just like other regions)

Why is ITV buying their own company? (I know they aren't I'm just saying it's confusing me!)

Scottish and Grampian are part of the ITV Network, but they are owned by Scottish Media Group, where as all of the Regions in England and Wales are part of the ITV Network, but they're owned by ITV Plc (formed from the merged Granada and Carlton)

The main objective within a few years is for one company to run the ITV Network.

Though I'm surprised that ITV weren't interested in SMG, they probably don't want to pay over the odds for it, like Granada when they bought Anglia/Meridian/HTV.

Why would they want to buy SMG? Won't they have to give it seperate presention like in wales, with extra reginal programs etc?

I'd have thought the current lot would have been very interested in a region with a lot of men running around in skirts .

So they can get nearer to owning each station within the Network. Even if they did buy them very little would change, branding wise 'ITV1 Scotland' would probably happen, but I'd guess they'd run it in the same way as each Region is treated by ITV Plc.

There are probably loads of reasons why ITV might not want to buy SMG this time, they might not want to pay a high price for it, they probably want to buy it when it's cheaper. Also note that ITV only wants Scottish and Grampian, they don't want the other bits tagged along. That's what ITV Plc is, as they've sold off their non-core assets such as Carlton Books, Carlton Screen Advertising, stakes in Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United, some film thing that Carlton owned etc etc.

Fantastic news for all Scottish viewers take it that's NO to ITV 1 Scotland

Doesn't look likely in the near future.

How would Grampian look. Would it be called ITV1 Grampian?

I would think they would probably just merge Scottish and Grampian.

> Though I'm surprised that ITV weren't interested in SMG, they probably don't want to pay over the odds for it, like Granada when they bought Anglia/Meridian/HTV.

The aim then was to ensure that Granada remained the largest part of any merged ITV company, so taking over complete control. In that sense it is money well spent.

Now however there is no particular incentive for ITV to take over two small franchises that don't have much more room for cost-cutting. So they'll bide their time.